Eleven Quid
by TKodami
Summary: What if "Buffy vs. Dracula" hadn't ended with Buffy's confrontation? What might the rest of that night looked like for Buffy, Spike, Xander, Riley and Giles? Eleven Quid is the prologue to an AU S5 BtVS/Angel/Highlander crossover
1. Be My Watcher Again

**Title:** Eleven Quid (Episode 00)  
**Author:** TKodami  
**Fandom:** Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel  
**Rating: **14+  
**Disclaimer:** Neither the shows, nor the characters belong to me. I'm only mucking about in the Whedon sandbox.  
**Summary:** After "Buffy vs. Dracula," the Master Vampire seems a little less dead than one would expect...  
**Notes:** This is the prologue to an alternate version of Buffy S5. Nothing is crazy out-of-continuity yet. Look out for hints of things to come.

#

It was done. Dracula was dead.

"Dracula wasn't entirely wrong about the Slayer's darkness," Buffy said, sitting opposite of Giles on the green leather sofa of his apartment-slash-Scooby Central-slash-bachelor pad-slash-self imposed exile form the workaday world. Her hands agitated in her lap. "It started with the enjoining spell." Spiritus, Animus, Sophus, Manus. That's when she had transformed from Buffy Summers, Teen Slayer into a feral beast who ran vampires to ground like wounded gazelle. As she described her new hunting ritual to her Watcher in minute detail, a dark shape settled on her face.

His fingers brushed the teapot, but refused to close around the smooth porcelain handle. "Yes, I see," he said, holding his body stock still.

Giles wanted so very badly to believe it was true. That the enjoining spell had catalyzed her recent changes. But when Buffy had described how she averted her first apocalypse for the fake Acathla-binding spell (what passed as Council-sanctioned grief counseling), he'd seen the same dark shape crowd her face. No love was lost between him and Angel, but Giles had shuttered inwardly after that tale. He felt a repetition of that shutter build in his chest. As in the library three years ago, the chilly resolve in Buffy's eyes—this is what had to be done, goes without saying—discomfited him.

One of many cultivated nervous reflexes kicked in, and he poured tea as a means to divert his gaze from the Slayer.

And if it had been Jenny at the edge of the portal, sword in his hands, the world waiting for him to slay love to save all? The uncanny thought dug greedy fingers into his past.

A memory was rooted up, unacknowledged except as one dry entry in his Watcher's Chronicle. That same evening two years ago. Too agitated by Buffy's admission to return to his house but unable to ring her (try the graveyard, probably Sunny Pines, Willow had told him—maybe Restfield Park, Xander had hedged), Giles shelved returns in the stacks in the Occult section. These books were claptrap mostly, tame reading for the students: spellbooks without components, farcical beastiaries, and enough vampire lore to scare the brighter ones into living like hermits until graduation.

He had run his fingers over the brittle spines of the books and found himself minutes later--against his better reason and years of Watcher training-- himself outside of the weapon's cage, testing the weight of Buffy's sword in his hands.

It was easy work to imagine Jenny in a gauzy white blouse at the lip of the portal, her mahogany eyes not grudging him the flinty steel. After several long imaginative pauses to fill in the gaps of the ancestry of Acathla, the mystical sword, the balance of Powers That Be with The Powers That Devour, Giles attempted a killing stroke. The edge of the blade skewered _Wearther's Compendium of Misfortunate Happenings, Paupers' Edition_. The crash sent up puffs of dust and loose sheaves, and fell around him like snowflakes. He hadn't been able to bear the weight of her responsibility.

"You haven't been my Watcher for some time."

Giles felt the acute loss of words as a similar weight bowed his head.

"No," he agreed.

She stood. Her body was tense, as though she was fighting down an impulse to flee. She paced in front of him, deliberate. Measured steps and hands tightening circles around each other--movements he'd expected, but hadn't seen for years, in the graveyards. Her. Nervous.

"Maybe if I could learn to control this thing, I could be stronger, I could be better." A long look at him seemed to snap Buffy from her hesitancy. She sat on couch again. Her face was inexplicably open, hopeful. "I can't do it without you."

A pause. "I need you to be my Watcher again."

_Good lord,_ he wanted to say. He dismissed the urge to polish his glasses. Buffy started talking again to fill up the empty space in the conversation.

"You-you had something you wanted to say?" she stammered, at last opening up a space for Giles.

Mostly, he was aware of the words he _wasn't _saying to her. The speech he had prepared. Buffy, I wanted to tell you how proud I am at how far you've come. But the point in fact is: I have no more for you. This year, I have been as dangerous and ingrating as a freeloading chipped vampire. Do you remember the earthquake in January? The one I pooh-poohed to draw my little map of the commando's movements? You had said it was the end of the world, and your Watcher ignored your intuition. Were it not for a need to distract me from Riley's activities, you may not have pressured me to discover that we were barreling into the End Times with shit-eating grins. You may have needed me briefly to deal with that monstrosity Adam. But he's defeated. Your successful integration of Slaying and coursework at Sunnydale U has shown what an unnecessary cog I am.

If he was an even deeper kind of honest, he was still in fact a cog in the Slayer gearbox, the box marked: Giles, Superfluous, To Be Logged And/Or Destroyed at Archivist's Leave.

Buffy's hands fidgeted on the rough denim of her jeans. She didn't say anything. A slow tapping of her fingers, he realized, was begging him for completion of this ritual. He felt a tad shocked by this revelation. His Buffy lived in the action. What on Hellmouth's green earth could have given her the deep need to hear the words? Realizing in that instant that despite her ability to sweep all the hard lessons up into her Slayerness in such stride as to seem to waltz effortlessly into adulthood, she offered to him the mantle, if not the actual role, of mentor.

His self-reflexive speechifying smoldered for a moment, indulgent of the librarian's need to let the walls fall. He needed to reestablish the warmth he'd stamped out for this _Godspeed, International Calling Rates Aren't As Steep As You'd think_ talk.

Giles fetched his winningest smile. "It's nothing," and reached for his teacup. "Yes Buffy," he said levelly. "Of course I'll be your Watcher."

They embraced before Buffy darted out of the door (family beckons, she'd said vaguely). It stung only a little to have an emptiness so suddenly acknowledged and just as inexplicably filled. Vampire brides and Dracula thrall aside, it had been, he reasoned, a good day.


	2. Take a Message

Maybe it had been a good day. Maybe it had been a bad night. Angel shifted another pillow under his head and stared through the page of his book.

If he was being precise about it, in a running-tally on the whiteboard kind of way—which was _not_ the way the business of saving souls should be run— it was an okay day of congealed pigs' blood followed by an excruciating evening of royally fucking up his scared Champion duty. His eyelids closed like lead shutters. Angel spent his last conscious thought on tossing _l'Idiot_, unread, onto his nightstand.

_Sunnydale_. The word floated up as though summoned. The Master's home, prison, and tomb. Seat of the Aurelian line. Gloried hall of Hell's gaping mouth. The city of vampires and their Slayer. With a pang of strange regret, a certain night at the Bronze clawed its way out of his brain. The night Buffy had first burned him, the intensity of her cross pressing against his flesh. His cross. The night after he'd staked Darla and hadn't even—how could have possibly failed to have—and not even one little—?

Guilt churned in his veins. Suddenly, he was a hundred back in a red Victorian boudoir in the heart of Romania andoh_Darla_, her thick blond curls falling over bare shoulders. His fingers tangled in her curls as he kissed her neck, arms, face like they were still lovers and as though he hadn't turned her bones and skin to so many handfuls of ash. _Unlamented_ ash.

He tumbled into the black.

After a length of time, he found himself in a tight doormen's suit. The brass appointments of the uniform glinted in the white streaming through the grand Venetian blinds. Seated in a bare wood chair at the edge of a finely appointed lobby with brass fixtures and marble-mahogany furniture, he waited to be bidden. The hotel reminded him nothing of the faceless hotels he'd passed through like a merry-go-round in his fifty years of mere drifting before the final resorting to transience. Pre-Sunnydale, he struggled to remember. Pre-Buffy.

A man stumbled in the door, a bottle of cheap whiskey in hand, tattered brown coat stained and stinking of the gutter and rat blood. Angel did not recognize this tramp, unconsciously straightening the lapels of his uniform. His days as a doorman were limited. One of these days he would be _in_ wherever it was those shiningly clad folk went as they whirled up the stairs, laughing at jokes which must have been funnier than any of the ones that Gunn and Wes told him, in dresses prettier than the ones that Cordy smoothed over her slim hips, with arms and torsos as sleekly defined and dangerous as Faith. The rat-smelling wreck puked up blood in the potted ferns. The stinking companion was worse than loneliness, he raged.

He opened the door to a new guest. A woman in blonde curls and a red, slinky kimono slid through the entrance and up the lobby stairs, disappearing into the hall.

A memory sparked in her wake. This man who stunk of overripe fruit and dead flesh was blocking his prize. An older man wrapped his knuckles on the glass, his travel bags hunching his shoulders terribly. He didn't hear; the bliss of knowing had transmuted the world around him to ice. Red Kimono would give him his prize. All he had to do was snap the tramp's neck. The thick ridges of his demon-face slid down his brow. He broke the leg off his Spartan chair. Three-legged, it sagged to one side. Useless now, his station.

The tramp saw the doorman coming and did nothing.

Angel hauled the empty-eyed creature to its feet by the lapels of its rancid jacket. It moaned, struggling to hold its head up for inspection. Angel hefted the makeshift club and stabbed the splintered end into the tramp's heart. It writhed. The stake descended again and again. Each time, writhing, stillness, and the eventual jerking movement of the tramps head. Big soulful brown eyes, soulful but empty of desire. They didn't ask him to stop. The limbs stilled. The head lolled back. The head twitched. The body drew another shuddering breath. The stake came down again. With brutal fury he killed it. Killed it until it was dead. And killed it again.

He couldn't open enough doors to escort the unfortunate through the lobby. And he didn't really want to. He burned to hold the red kimono woman in the doorway, press their bodies together hungrily in the light or in the dark. He wanted to kill the dirty pretender pissing in the hotel planters. He wanted to press his whole body to ash. Which is what, a small but growing voice whispered in his belly, he had wanted from the very first sip from his powdered lady's breast.

He woke to a gentle tapping from the hallway.

"Sunnydale—" Wesley said, his face anxiously peering through the crack.

"Take a message," Angel said. The door clicked shut.


	3. Scenes with Riley Always Move Quick

Returning from Giles' with a Buffy-sized grin on her face, the Slayer found Riley sitting in the swing on her porch.

He stood to greet her, all gentlemanly.

"Riley." She kissed him on the cheek.

"Buffy--" Riley's fingertips ghosted around the marks on the side of her neck.

Buffy wasn't ready for Emotional Kick-Down Drag-Out Part II, so she dispensed with a long hug and a simple explanation.

"Drac's dust." Buffy brushed the fingers away and covered the mark with her hand. "We usually have a week breather between each new bad. I'll be fine. But I need a few nights alone."

She held up a hand to silence the oncoming protest.

"Day after tomorrow at the latest," she said. "By then, I'll be killed or cured."

Her sweet confidence must have touched him, because Riley agreed without further argument.


	4. History Must Not Be Repeated

What the Prince had wanted from the very first—and only—sip of the Slayer's blood, was to have her inside him. To have her mouth on his wrist and drink freely. _On reflection_, with all his energies turned to tugging his body through the curtain of death, _I should have drunk her down_.

A panic crept over the Prince. The energy of the spell was dissipating. The bright blue halo that tied him to the mortal coil, wrought by gypsy kin centuries ago for good service rendered to the clan, had dimmed so that only his keen vampiric sight could discern its angelic glow in the darkness of the vaulted banquet room. The power of the counter-spell had been depleted by two failed re-corporealizations. One more failure, and it could be decades before he gathered enough energies to re-manifest. He cursed his arrogance. Revealing himself to his target like some moony-eyed starlet, he had been completely assured of his mastery on these shores.

Even as far east as Romania, word of the masterless Hellmouth spread like wildfire through the remote villages of the Carpathians. When the news finally dribbled in to the ancestral chateau, he had wasted no time installing a trusted gypsy family in the estate to hold it against encroachers. His tour of Sunnydale had been, yes, partly to meet the world-renowned Slayer. A Slayer who'd, against odds, beaten back no less than six apocalypses. But his thirst was deeper. He thirsted for a domain free of the entrenched animosities of the vampire clans, unclaimed by the mewling remnants of the Aurelian Line- a new conquest, empty, untamed. And a Hellmouth made for quite the impressive holding. The loss of the Cleveland property in the Republic Steel Corp mergers seventy years ago still stung. He the silent owner and taxingly incommunicato at the renewal deadline- on account of being more dead than usual.

_History must not be repeated_, Dracula thought urgently. The Hellmouth had seen fit to humble him, so be it. Now it was his turn to demonstrate the power of a true Master Vampire.

He struggled to pull the bones and sinew of his new body out of the dust. It was imperative to be together before one of the Slayer's merry misfits returned to torch the castle. Or before a bored bride kicked his head away from his materializing limbs, vindictive for a petty quarrel.

Barring his teeth, he worked a hand out of the pile of burnt carbon. An arm, shoulder, and neck slowly followed. Half an upper torso, almost. He thanked a handful of dark deities by name that the Slayer couldn't see him lain this low.

Her room had been soft and girlish, white and pink predominant in the linens. The mark on her neck he understood. She'd been tasted before, but never tasted in reciprocal fashion. Hadn't he opened a vein for her like a gentleman? Hadn't she chosen of her own free will to drink from his wrist, hungering to be taught what she was? She had taken two or three pulls on the slit vein. And then something in his blood had turned her down-soft eyes into flint.

The Slayer had been savvy enough to stake him twice after his resurrection fires had worked their magic. It was pathetic. It was a mistake. It was he who had been taught: do not mix demon nature with demon nature. Vampires and Slayers had nothing to offer each other but death, he mulled. But this mistake could be rectified. The Prince was not a stupid creature.

Dracula bit through his lip as he pulled his other hand from the ashy floor. He panted as the bonds that tied him to this world screamed to the point of breaking. He would not break. He would rise again. He would take care of the Slayer.


	5. Keyed Up at Lowell House

Riley was back to his digs at Lowell House. Kicked to the curb. Keyed up. _Like old times_. He shot hoops through the basket on his door until he popped the inflatable ball between his hands.

A night of hard drinking was out of the question. The new residents of Lowell House were all freshman. None of His Guys remained. After the Fall of the House of Walsh and the subsequent renovation (twenty feet of solid cement down the elevator shaft), all of the Initiative crew had shipped out to testify in secret Senate subcommittee hearings, or for reassignment state-side. Graham, pack slung over his shoulder, had handed him a crumpled piece of note book paper with scrawled contact numbers on the inside. The others had simply saluted, or shaken hands warmly with him.

So maybe it wasn't like old times. Whatever _old times_ actually were, as he hadn't the faintest idea about Buffy's nightly activities for the last three months. Not once did the bed creak to give away her leavings or returning to the bed. Fact was, she would have kept that reveal from him. But Giles had already been told, so the proverbial cat had already been thrown into the proverbial river, bag and all.

_Might as well tell Riley_, he thought bitterly, his growing unease at being Scooby sidekick in the Buffy Summers universe getting the better of him.

Riley paced the length of the room.

He didn't need to come to a conclusion. What he needed, what he hungered after was a _plan_. Throwing an old black-camo shirt over his head, he strapped a few stakes to his belt and shouldered a taser. The plan he settled on was some murky combination of stealthy approach and gunslinger-esque all-out vamp brawling once inside the Sunnydale castle.

_Buffy wouldn't approve_, he thought. _Buffy doesn't want you to get yourself dead_. But the adrenaline kept pumping fight-fight-fight impulses into his blood. He needed to kill something. Even if it was just the satisfaction of burning a pile of ash.

He wondered briefly how Dracula could have gotten so many films if he was so easy to kill.

"This isn't movies," Riley said. And the saying of it made him feel marginally more confident. But he was just a guy with a kick-ass girlfriend, saving the world piecemeal vampire patrol by vampire patrol.

It was time to start acting big.

He strapped two more stakes to his leg and bolted out the door. He felt like an action hero when he didn't face-plant into the sidewalk when he tripped over his laces on his first steps down the porch. Night was looking up already. Had Buffy been here, Riley was no doubt sure that he'd have broken his nose in the fall and earned another one of those pert, "Why Do You Try?" cheek-kisses.

"Enough talk. It's time for action man." Riley struck a small pose on the porch of Lowell House, then loped off across the wet grass of the SunnyD campus towards Destination: Dracula's Soon-to-Be Bordello of Smoldering Ash.


	6. Say It Ain't So

"Dawn? What the _hell_ were you thinking? 'Yes, let's try pizza sauce juggling while Buffy's wearing her favorite tank-top?' Seriously, are you brain-damaged, or was I this stupid when I was teen? Please, mom, say it ain't so!"

"Buffy—"

"Buffy—"

"My _favorite_ tank-top."

"Is this some kind of delayed reaction to sucking face with the Prince of Darkness?"

"I won't have you girls arguing tonight—I just can't deal with it tonight—the gallery has a gala opening in—I'll be in my room if you need me."

"Dawn, look what you did!"

"Me? You're the one having a 10-megaton freakout. Just chill, it'll come out."

"Chill? _Chill?_ If you're not in the laundry room stain-removing in like ten seconds, I'll show you a new definition of 'chill'."

"_Lame_ comeback."

"Dawn, I'm _warning _you…"

"Yeah whatever. I'll be out on the porch."


	7. We Go Way Back

Spike approached the craftsman Revello Drive porch with quick snap of his boots. He told himself that he wasn't checking on her. Merely paying a formal "are you dead or alive, Slayer?" visit. All verbal spurs and barbs he was bound to suffer aside, it was a right proper custom between arch-rivals. He took in sight of the house. He scanned for pitfalls, traps, weakened entry points. The Doug fir overhanging the sloping roof provided perfect access to the Slayer's bedroom window. Break her neck in her sleep, he could. Or he could knock on the door and ask: _e__xcuse me Joyce. Sorry for not dropping in for tea this year. You must have been terribly put out by your one and only heading off to college with nothing but stakes and fists. Is your eldest still amongst the living?_

He didn't need to. Two shrill voices pierced the quiet. One was ostensibly the Slayer, the other totally unfamiliar. Sounds of her shouting at—maybe someone new in the house?

The image of a gawky long-haired teen, all angles and indignation, formed in his mind at that instant. But he shook the mental picture off and smiled like a predator. That right buggering ponce Dracula must have learned the true stuff of Slayers. Like frills on a steel trap, this one.

The door slamming open on its hinges took him by surprise. He instictively pressed back into the deeper shadows of the Doug fir. For reasons he cared not to examine, his unnecessary breath quickened to large but ragged intervals. The smallish girl heard him. She hitched a foot on a crack in the cement and stumbled right beside his clever hiding spot.

"Who's there?" the young girl squeaked, inching backward on her hands and knees to the porch steps. "I know something's there."

His long-buried Victorian sensibilities surfaced for a moment. A niggling patience in the base of his skull cut the desire to say something right scary to the little one. Daily he suspected that those army blokes had installed more than the all-work-and-no-play chip when they were carving into his brainpan. Muck about the importance of first impressions paraded through his head, as though—hello, vampire?—he didn't already know the value of the slo-mo dramatic sweep. His fingers groped for smokes in his back pockets. He patted down his jeans for his cherished Zippo.

"Whatever's out there—if you touch me, my sister is so going to kill you." Hands fell away from pockets, and he looked up at the young little thing, now on her feet, shivering in the light, hands circling her waist. _Go on then, call for her nibblet_._ Let her explain to you that this Big Bad's not interested in some off-the-street bint. _

_S_trong shocks, like hands reaching into his head to rearrange his synapses to align just so, fired. He knew this girl. He knew _this_ girl. She had a name, and he knew it. Dawn. Buggerit.

He ghosted into the dimmed light of the porch.

The bit pulled her hands away from her waist. She seemed to nonchalantly drop her eyes to take account of the number of leaves on the nearest hedge. "Oh," she said (Crestfallen?). "Hi Spike."

Cig in hand. Now lit. He dragged on the end, sucking the smoke down. He had a comeback. It died on his lips after each drag.

"Want me to call her?" she asked after a long pause.

He gave her a look. He didn't quite know what it communicated, but he was fairly confident it was a cross between sheer annoyance and simple cool. Not the sheepish grin of having been caught with a fat hand in the cookie jar, or the guiltynervous blood-lust that sang _Slayer, I could kill you every night and feel your death not near enough. No, not hardly._

"Are you here to get your face beat in by Buffy, or are you just here to gloat about her spiffy new marks ala the Prince of Sexy Darkness?" Her voice turned wickedly smug. "Cause that would drive her through the roof."

He choked on an accidental drag of smoke. He covered the sound with a derisive growl. "New Marks?"

The thought of Dracula's teeth in the Slayer's throat set him on fire. Suddenly he was on the balls of his toes, pacing back and forth between the twin firs like a caged cat. He _knew_ it, back in the crypt sucking on a bottle of Jack that Dracula would sink in to the Slayer before Captain America found his posh digs, but he should have _known_ it.

"That ponce. That right buggering ponce." He gestured fiercely at the palms, the hedge, Dawn, the Slayer's window as he ranted. "Not as though the Slayer needs a guard dog, but you don't go Cowboy-and-Indians for the Prince of Sodding Transylvania. You circle the wagons, kiddies, set up perimeters, lookouts. You don't leave the—"

He approached the porch. Dawn scrambled to her feet. The light glinted off his eyes and threw crazy highlights into his sharp blonde hair. It bothered him more than words. The Superfriends had foiled every damn plan during his short reign as Master Vamp of Sunnydale-way. _So what, vamp royalty comes to town and they're suddenly star struck? Let the Slayer get bit on? _The Scooby patrol laid down for Dracula. The rage nearly bowled him over.

"Seriously Spike, you look so much like Giles right now, it's creepy." Dawn snorted. Her tone became more conversational at that point. She slumped down onto the front steps, and leaned her elbows against the night-cooled cement. "Dracula's dust now, so that's a plus. What's it to you, anyways?"

"Me and Drac, we go way back. Old foes, we are. " He couldn't finish. He had no idea what he would say.

"What?" She quirked an eyebrow at him, as though he weren't speaking the same language.

It didn't fit on him right, having to ask the bit for help. But that showy gypsy magic of his made him impossible to track. Oh, that wanker flew. As though walkin' was just too pedestrian, fit for below-me types, vamps and humans alike. "Drac's estate. Who went? It's important," he said through gritted teeth.

She seemed to give no thought to the important of him asking _her_ for help, as though standing on the porch of the Slayer's twentieth-century stoop-covered Craftsman bungalow with a stray smoking cursing vampire, dreaming up the names of the latest vampire assault crew was the most natural thing in the world for a teenage girl to do on a cool September night.

"Riley. Oh!" she squealed. "Check this--he's over at Lowell house tonight because Buffy totally kicked him to the curb." Dawn giggled. "Wish I coulda seen his face." Spike demonstrated how much he didn't care with an un-subtle rolling of his eyes.

Dawn's eyes unfocused and scrunched up her lip as she plucked the narrative thread. "Giles."

"Did Anya go, or was she locked up in a closet?" Dawn mused. Times like these, he thought to himself, the bit acted nothing like her sister. Suffered his presence with much less manifest suffering. It felt almost like he was—he wasn't sure. It was simply different.

"What would you bet?" Spike retorted.

"I bet she was in the closet." She paused. "Xander."

Xander. The name perked him right up. If there was one person he could count on to push the kill-crush-destroy vampire buttons at any time of night, it was the carpenter.

"Were you _watching_ Buffy?" The right-angle conversational segue did the trick of yanking him out of his head. Spike was suddenly very aware of his heavy hands on her shoulders, white hands with threads of blue-veins on the Slayer's little sis—a stakeable offense he was sure—and he let them drop, jerkily and not without (he was sure of it) a loss of face. The night air was on his cheek like a warm blanket. His Docs chafed against skin as he shifted his weight from leg to leg. "You're so obvious sometimes." She mimicked Spike's eye-roll expertly.

A beetling sense of horror crawled up his spine. He about-faced. Jaw and mind set solely on the confrontation with Harris. The duster flared out as he bounded down the walkway of the Revello Drive bungalow.

Her voice, high and thin with increasing distance, called after him, "Dracula's dust, remember?" A pause and a little louder, to make up for the intervening space he'd created between them. "What could be so important?"

Twenty-five year old doc martens worn thin on the heels. Dirt caked on the toes and soles. Underneath, cracks veining the slender cement walkway. The details all seemed so important at the moment, taken in part or in whole. He couldn't bring himself to look back at the girl.

"Blighter owes me eleven quid."


	8. Doubly Unwanted Houseguest

The phone jolted him out of sleep. He groped for the handset. Defensively, his mind scuttled through lists of apt verbs to convey his complete lack of caring. Sleep was a rare commodity with the triple burden of patrol, work, and apocalypse averting and it made him cranky to lose any of it.

He performed the once-over mental inventory which he'd found he needed less and less as the years shuffled on. Xander Harris. Faithful friend. World-saver. Snappy dresser. Scooby-patroller. Master's bit—scratch that. Where was he? Burnt lint and bleach. Ah. The basement. _Anya_? Sleeping at her place. The aforementioned smells gave her headaches. Or was it the sounds of his parents' marital bliss (breaking china and tequila bottles) which did her in? The list ticked out to include prized possessions, most of which lined the walls of the damp basement in half-filled packing boxes. The boxes gave him the satisfaction of having one foot out of the door without actually having done any of the apartment-searching or money-saving that were generally prerequisite for leaving.

_Sod 'em all_, Xander finally concluded, painfully adopting the accent of The Mooch. He imagined the spiky-haired vampire delivering the line while tucked into Xander's red recliner, watching Xander's television, chowing down on Xander's box of Wheetabix--maybe not that last part, he conceded, striking that last offense off the list, full of the milk of human kindness.

His inner voice sounded a lot like the chipped wonder these days. It was no wonder. The Scoobies—more specifically, Giles--had decided to bunk the vampire in his basement over his heated objections. They blithely assumed he could take care of it; what was one more _bloody annoying_ thing to do between a blissfully easy routine of Doublemeat Palace shifts and Restfield Pines patrols? And now the blonde vampire's sarcasm's had taken up residence in his brain like a doubly-unwanted houseguest. When he stopped to consider it, as he was trying not to do at this very moment, his life sometimes sucked beyond the telling of it.

Xander felt pretty pleased with himself as he grabbed the phone on the fifth ring _and_ managed to sound like a reasonably nonchalant human being who hadn't been gulping air like a parched Laurence of Arabia. "Hello, Buffy? Something afoot?" he hazarded.

"Xander, Giles. I had some thoughts concerning Dracula," came the response. The nonchalant attitude he'd been forcing took a hit in its chalatant factor.

"Giles, I'm completely down with the stopping of evil at all hours of the day, but could we maybe avert this apocalypse in--" he checked the splashy green numerals of his digital clock radio. "Three to five hours?"

"Oh." A cleaning-the-glasses sized pause followed. "Well, the matter is a bit less urgent, considering Dracula is dead. M-more dead, that is, than he was previously."

"Did you bother to touch base with Pacific Standard Time _before_ you thought up the wacky scheme of 'phone Xander with exciting dead people trivia'?" Under better circumstances, Xander might have thought this exchange a bit harsh. However, yesterday's activities as Dracula's bug-eater and man-bitch— neither of which he decided to mention_ ever again_ after this and maybe one more of Buffy's _Dracula's dead, ask me how! _conversations tomorrow—he'd hoped, had bought him one night's reprieve from Scooby-related all-hourness.

"Well, no," Giles said. There was only the barest hint of offense behind the words. "I'm sorry to have bothered you. We can discuss this in the morning, perhaps? I'm eager to pursue the recurrence of Dracula in the texts after several Watcher-reported stakings. There might be more work--"

"Okay, Dracula, re-animation, Good Lord!, books. Gotcha. Sleeping now," Xander's hand was sliding the handset back into the cradle as he heard a rather dry _sorry to have bothered you_ and a _good night Xander_ float his way.

"Sod 'em all," Xander muttered, aloud, to punctuate the deep meaning of the statement to the universe.

"Singin' my tune, are you now?"

A lighter clicked open. The small flame illuminated the form on the red chair—down to the detail of the duster—just as he'd seen in his head. _Stupid head_, Xander reproached, as though his thinking it had made it (very annoying) flesh and bone. Spike fiddled with the lighter as he puffed on the cig, but didn't kill the flame.

Xander was beyond dealing with the universe's crap. A drunken vampire was the second-to-last thing in the galactic rolls of the "shit Xander won't put up with" list. A pillow lanced across the room, aimed at Spike's head. It fell short and landed softly at the vampire's feet. "_Out._"

"Not even a threat for an old mate?" Spike fluttered a hand mockingly over his heart. Xander noted that he didn't sound weepy drunk like Willow had described to him years back. "I'm shocked. Right shocked. Disappointed, even. Time was, you would have staked me right and proper for crashing your dank little hellhole."

"Dank hellhole with garden-view. It's in the brochure," Xander said dazed now and convinced (very ha-ha funny) that this was dream Xander having an almost civil conversation with dream Spike. "A ceiling fan would be nice. Or, cabana girls with big leafy palms. Cabana girls, that's the ticket."

"Seeing that you've gone completely starkers, I'll quit with the chit-chat." Spike's tone shifted, almost imperceptibly, Xander noted, except that the months around the layabout vampire gave him some insight into the many moods of Spike: hungry, annoying, (blood)thirsty, television, (booze)thirsty, violent, serious(ly violent). "I heard you nonces took care of Drac last night—"

"Again with the Dracula! Dracula is dead. Very dead. Beyond dead. Dust! See for yourself! Better yet, you're in my head—shouldn't you just know this already? Unless you're a part of some subroutine that the Mas—Dracula—stuffed in to make every corner of the rest of my life miserable," Xander blathered on, quite unable to stop himself. "Maybe if I just think you away, you'll shut your trap and a man could get some rest around here."

Spike snorted. "Yeah—right."

And then he stood.

Spike wasn't at all the dark figure of Angel, or even the quietly impressive cut of Dracula. Completely lacking the imposing bulk of Riley, or the quiet command that Xander sometimes glimpsed behind Giles' faintly ungathered exterior, the wired figure held only the promise of violence—a promise that still, underneath all of the rationalized _he's chipped_, _he's helped_, _ motherfucker's slept on my couch_ touched a raw core of the black-and-red clad vamp who crashed his death squad through the school windows on Parent-Teacher Night. The light danced along the sharp corners of Spike's face and in it, he saw himself as he could have been that night. A dead, used-up thing. A dead, used-up _not dreaming in the least_ thing.

"Look MapQuest, just point me the right direction to Drac's castle and I'll leave you to your deep-south cabana boys."

"Cabana _girls_." The verbal sparring came natural, at least. "Can't you vamps just sniff each other out like nasty little mutts?"

"Ponce flies, don't he?"

"Does that make a difference?" Xander found himself deeply wanting to simply answer the vamp's question and move him along, but this prolonged torture couldn't be helped. The inexorable logic of the verbal battle proceeded …inexorably. His internal monologuing, more than rusty of late. "Is poor Spike not even half the vampire that Drac is, needs the human touch to get it done?"

The lighter snapped shut. Everything, the chair, the duster, the boxes, the lovely basement décor, dark. The sudden flood of black turned out not to be the relief he thought it'd be. The possibility of Spike's chip malfunctioning at this very moment seemed a very real possibility with Xander's winning luck.

"East, along the hills." Xander swallowed. "Eighth and Rio Bravo, near the old Rotterdam Church."

There was a grunt of acknowledgement. The lighter sparked.

Just as he said it, the opening salvo of rationality: _haven't you pissed off the sociopath vampire enough for one night to die in a fire_—but too late: "Planning on nicking Drac's stuff, are ya? Lovely habit you vamps have. No respect for—"

"—You're damn right—"

"—the dead"

The flap of the duster and the stillness in the basement that followed after the gentle whoosh of the outer door said it. Spike was gone.

Xander retrieved the pillow. He tossed it onto the fold-out couch, but he didn't slip back under the covers. Lingering at the edge of his bed, his mind started playing connect-the-dots with the night's assorted weirdness. Giles. The Master. Dracula's castle. Spike. Nicking objets d'art, or whatever one vamp nicked from one's dead betters. Buffy's decision to stay behind in Drac's chamber for that extra beat before they shipped off back to Scooby Central. Research. Books. Research. Something Giles said.

"Spike knows something you don't know," Xander's brain sang out as his eyes cleared. This wasn't a Spike's drunk-off-his-ass moment. "Universe, I'm up, I'm up," Xander groaned as he clawed for his muddy work boots pushed under the bed.

He nabbed a few stakes from the packing box marked NECESSITIES at the lip of the door and tucked them snug into the pockets of his leather jacket. Out on the street, he hesitated between choices, east or west. East took him straight towards Rio Bravo, more or less, with no more than a couple wending detours around the scenic Hills of Sunnydale. After a little reflection, and not completely unaware of the irony, Xander struck out west as he followed the strong smell of tobacco hanging heavy in the night air towards the heart of town.


	9. So Much For Self Control

Buffy clicked the television off and slipped up to her bedroom, past Joyce's room—where her mother had disappeared only a half-hour ago with much fanfare with a headache. She felt a pang of regret for the knock-down, drag-out with Dawn. Her self-control around her sister was admittedly thin, but that was only because control was so imperative in every other facet of her life. Blowing up at Dawn was a safety valve, where Buffy could just be a pissed off older sister, and not have to shoulder the mythic responsibility of Always Doing Right. Buffy's hand hovered next to her sister's bedroom door, but the light was out, and Buffy didn't want to impose. Or start another fight with the apologizing.

In her room, Buffy fished her stakes out of the weapons chest and arranged them on the floor like pointed wooden dolls. A few were selected from the bunch, and separated into a new pile. She began to polish the closest. Anything to distract from the burning in her gut that told her _hunt, kill, glory in death._ In the enjoining spell dream, she had faced the First Slayer. The snarled black dreadlocks and white face paint. Sineya. She had told the First that the Slayer no longer slept on a pile of bones. And yet, here was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, applying cloth to her stakes to keep her body, as taut as a bow string, from snapping her back into the Old Ways. _Hunt, Kill, Glory in Death_.

Minutes later, the voice was barely quieter in the warm night air, bored as it was with predictable fledge kills of patrol.

So much for self-control.

***///***

The now-familiar turrets of Sunnydale's resident vamp castle loomed against the night. Lights glowed inside. Riley took in the sight of the city below. Warm suburban domiciles, happy in their warm suburban assurances. The light behind the wooden doors promised no such warmth, only hell.

Riley kicked through the rotted wood. "I _want_ hell."

He prepped his taser and advanced.


	10. A Little B&E

Xander leaned back into the deeper shadows of the alley and watched the blonde vampire jimmy the back door of one of the few but respectable Main Street establishments. A balmy California night if ever there was one--warm, clammy, breezeless, with more than a touch of the graveyard. Skin slick with sweat, Xander regretted the choice of the jacket. He thought of discarding it. Folding it up and sticking it under a well-chosen crate. Gave a 1-in-5 chance that it wouldn't be recycled by the local vamp population if he came back for it by dawn. What, besides holding stakes in a stylish and ne'er-do-welling manner, did he even need it for?

He cursed the delinquent vampire, the crazy seer vamp who sired him, and hell, the no-good moony-eyed Jack-the-Ripper cum Romeo who sired her for good measure. The only three vampires who induced the part-rage part-terror headaches that scattered all of his thoughts like packing peanuts.

The jamb of the door splintered. Spike disappeared inside.

The alley, but for the faint sound of merchandise being tossed off its shelves, stilled. The door gaped like some broken-jawed eyeless creature.

Despite committing his fair share of B&E, theft of government property, and even the very occasional abduction, Xander considered himself a cut above Chipped Wonder. It'd been nearly two years since he looked on as Jack O'Toole and his dead hooligan pals smashed the hardware storefront to bake a pretty twisted "cake". Spike here wasn't even a tenth of the kind of the threatening of creepy, psychotic O'Toole.

And yet—_Crime's going down and the Xand man is sucking on his gums, waiting for an invite_. _Crime of the booze-lifting variety, no doubt. _Why Xander hadn't yanked the hastily acquired pipe that seemed in steady supply for the villainous element from Spike's hand-- he couldn't say.

_Riley would have Action Man'ed the night's highly illegal activities to a standstill blocks ago_, Xander thought.

Spike reappeared in the doorway, his body lit by something jammed under his arm. Something _glowing_. A chain had been slung over his shoulder and coiled around his waist like a bandolier to make room for the bound grimoire in one hand and a wickedly ornate ax in the other. _Equipped for war._ Xander half-expected to see a dagger clenched between Spike's teeth. Underneath the glowing _jar? urn?_, a bottle of amber glinted. Points to me for the booze, Xander noted. The vamp paused for only a moment on the edge of the door, in the gray space carved out by the glow of whatever it was under his arm, before he was trotting off down the alley.

"Vamp speed—highly overrated," Xander quipped as he loped behind Spike at a distance, heading unerring east around dumpsters, crates and fences as they snaked through the underbelly of Sunnydale.

At corner of Main and 8th, the alley abrupted in a grassy lot marked off for development. The green-taped fence was smattered with public hearing notices. From the cover of post office's awning, Xander could see the glowing prize slip from Spike's arm as he took the seven-foot fence in one smooth leap. No hesitation. Xander was across the street in seconds to rescue the fallen object. The urn. It was deep cerulean, a pulsed faintly. It was safe, now, in his hands.

He felt a surge of pride. The urn made this game _his_ now--despite the fact he had no clue as to the rules. Or the urn's function. Or the stakes. _Stakes_.

Xander grabbed the stakes out of his jacket pocket and threw the dead weight to the side. He started running. He only had to make it to the ridge of trees at the top of the hill. From there, he could cut across the corridor of burnt-out Mustang skeletons in the abandoned junkyard to the baroque metal gates of Rotterdam church. Spike had made the mistake of taking the scenic route. Xander thrilled as he flew up the steeply inclined hill as easily as if he'd been strolling arm-and-arm with Anya through Restfield Park. Blood pumped through his body. Who needs Action Man when they've got the Xand Man?

The hand on the urn tingled, as though it had a heartbeat of its very own. He was so very awake now, universe.


	11. Eleven Quid

Dracula patted down his reassembled body. His new fingers, stiff at the joints, gingerly probed the folds of his favorite vest for the not one, but two, stake holes.

That was the last time he would put on the finery for a Slayer. He'd have the holes repaired, once he found the time to cow the Sunnydale vampire populace and cull proper minions from the slack-jawed locals. But the holes in his pride that had killed him twice over—that would take more than a splash of gypsy magic to fix. Next time, it would be as it should, he assured himself. Bones stripped and blood of the Beast on his killing clothes.

The sound of wood splintering caught the Master Vampire's attention. He snarled, barring his fangs in human face. The sharp scent of plastics mixed with the graveyard. It was one of the impudent whelps who'd come earlier to the aid of the Beast. His mind, unsteady in its new flesh, sought out the intruder, tried, failed, tried, failed, and found him standing at the entrance.

The base of his spine tingled with a familiar signature. A fractional pause. A familiar shadow seemed to flit next to the stone mantle where he'd turned so cockily to greet the Beast. He passed his eyes over the room. Nothing but windows, drapes, and naked stone. He dismissed the feeling.

He turned the force of his will onto the intruder at the door.

"_You want hell,"_ he said through the mouth of the boy. The connection was instantaneous. He heard with the whelp's ears, saw the twisted oak doors of his fool repeated his words, followed up with the high-pinched whine of electricity powering up.

"_Come to me_," Dracula called, "_kneel_."

"Only if the ponce buys me flowers first." The punch connected with his jaw. His weakened body sprawled on the Persian carpet.

Dracula ran a hand roughly across his lip, sucking down the blood that he couldn't afford to lose. He looked up with an annoyance that quickly faded.

"_You_?" he said, choking on his own blood.

"Me," Spike admitted with a savage grin.

***///***

"You," Dracula repeated flatly.

"Established that to your satisfaction, have we?" Spike snorted. He felt overdressed, the chain, the book, the axe, gloves and all the other peripherals he'd pilfered from the Magic Shop, for one damn bloody vamp.

"This must be a horrible joke at my expense," Dracula said.

"Welcome to Sunnyhell," Spike retorted.

Dracula appraised him, cocking his head to one side in a knowing mockery of the other vamp. "Is this about your--"

"Eleven quid," Spike said.

"I've already had the pleasure of repaying you your thirteen quid," Dracula said smoothly. "Or do you presume to collect interest?"

"Listen you git. _Eleven_. It's eleven. Eleven quid. The original sum. Not a ha'pence greater or less," Spike growled. "And _you'll_ never finish paying."

Dracula pursed his lips. Not a word had penetrated the Prince's cool shell of self-possession. He deigned to fix his silk collar and adjust the vest on his shoulders as though posing for a portrait. "You look ridiculous in those gloves," Dracula said at last.

"I'm bored ever so," Spike snarled.

He dropped the accessories and grabbed for the chain. Dracula, tough blighter, was on his feet as quick as quick as the chain came off Spike's shoulder. Spike grabbed up a good length of it into his fist and crouched. The other vamp tensed. Squared off like gunfighters at high noon in human face, they waited for fatal roll of the bell tower.

Owing to the lack of a clock tower on this side of town, it was Dracula who struck first with an overextended kick to Spike's midsection. Spike took the blow—dodging was for noncy types, anyway—and slid into game face.

_ Time for the demons to play_.

Spike smashed the chained fist across Drac's face. As the metal touched the Master Vamp's skin, a blistering smell tore out of curdling flesh. The older vampire jerked away. His hand shook as he touched the growing knot of scar tissue and bubbling pus on his pretty jaw.

"Say hello to the Chain of Balthus—" Spike grinned as he smashed his other fist across the reeling vampire's open face. "Some do cubism. Some do nudes. And some do chains of torment."

Dracula brought his arms up to block a kick, only to be greeted with another slash of the chain that broke his jawbone.

"—Never would have figured that git Balthus for the mystical type. It's the academic influence I suppose."

Spike slid a longer length of the chain down his arm and lanced it out like a projectile. It caught around Drac's neck. Spike patted the chain and pulled it tight around the prone vampire's neck.

Dracula didn't gasp as it crushed his windpipe. He was above that kind of _human_ reflex on account of him having been around for untold hundreds of years, a decidedly human voice inside Spike groused. He jerked the chain with a swift downward motion. The master vamp's neck snapped. With a muted thud, Dracula fell to his knees.

"Never was good with the small talk," he said, dropping the chain and hefting the axe. Spike looked into the face of the defeated vampire. "Cor, yeah—" he giggled, nearly killing the mood of the first Big Bad production to go off without a comical falling-into-the-open-grave or getting-zapped-by-commando-types. "I can see why they were so afraid of _you_."

Spike struck the head of the vamp clean off. Drac's body dissolved into a trail of wafting dust.

With a pull of his teeth, the bottle of consecrated palm wine was uncorked. He poured a libation over Drac's remains. The dust frothed—a right boiling mess. Vamp mud. Soup. Ash to ash, dust to dust and all that.

"And for the finishing touch, I offer one priceless objet d'art, a lekythos from —" Patting down his duster, he shook off his demon face. "From the island of—"

He spun his head this way and that, scanning the floor, the table, the chairs for the brilliant blue urn. His glowing mystical urn, 100% guaranteed to hold the demonic in a restful sleep or your money back. The urn he wedged under his arm because it made his skin crawl to touch it, even through the thick hide of the duster. The urn which he'd checked was snug under his arm just before he'd decided to cut through the development lot on 8th to lose the carpenter who followed behind, stealthy as a drunk—him. Before he jumped over the fence and felt a bit lighter of foot having lost the—

"Oh bloody buggering _fuck_." Spike's voice twinged, and with a bit of horror, he watched as white shining light enveloped the clotted dust.

On the floor, a hazy form began to writhe along the ground, creeping over the ornate blood-red carpet like crazy yellow vines. Perhaps, Spike mused sourly as he grabbed up the axe, there was an actual bloody _reason_ he never made it as Master Vamp.


	12. Late to the Party, as Usual

Buffy twirled a stake between her fingers. All was not right in the world. It was not solely her problem, she told herself. Somehow, somewhere, the telephone gods had decreed that no call should connect with another party tonight. Willow and Tara's machine picked up, Giles and Xander's lines were both busy (busy? Who aside from each other could they be talking to at this time of night?), Riley's had rung off into infinity, the clickity-clicking of the government tap setting her teeth on edge. In her desperation, had talked to Cordelia for a few minutes. For the third time since returning from Dracula's castle, she had attempted to reach Angel. And was assured that everything in LA was fine, better than fine, nothing like being all blowed up months before to reinforce how fine the present could be.

She meandered over to a headstone, collapsing heavily on Mrs. Susan Manners, loving wife, devoted mother, world renowned three-time tri-state cook-off champion, county cross-stitch queen, 1942-2000 whom was fated in a few minutes to be so much dust in the wind. _Oh god_, Buffy thought_, Riley's been listening to _way too much_ Kansas lately_. The blue tank top she'd changed into clung to her shoulder blades in the sticky heat. Buffy wrinkled her nose as she thought of vamp dust clumping on her skin.

"On the plus side," Buffy said to herself as she studied the text with all the seriousness of a late homework assignment, "my headstone's gonna be a lot less cluttered."

The perfect intro line for a vamp to burst out of Mrs. Susan's grave went unremarked. She pursed her lips. Hour two of Buffy Doesn't Hunt the Vamps Like a Rabid Dog, and no vamps had popped up yet. She mildly wondered if patrolling had ever been this boring for past Slayers.

Buffy inspected the end of her stake, flicking motes of dust from the dark grain of the wood.

***///***

Xander slowed to a jog along the edge of Rotterdam, taking in a view of the twisted spiral of the faux-cathedral and the castle turrets at once. As he approached the wide-set drive of the Dracula's estate, he noticed the smashed-in double doors.

"Late to the party, as usual," he quipped dryly.

It seemed prudent to stash the blue glowy vase thing safely in a hollowed out crevice under the massive stone steps, out of sight out of mind, before entering Dracula's love nest. The original plan: hide the jar before the Chipped Wonder arrived to do whatever serious damage he'd planned to the premises and bluff Spike out of his hell-bent destruction. Revised plan: use a bit of well-applied violence to disable the vampire when he was off his guard, fishing about for the canopic jar.

On second thought, Xander palmed the urn's lid. The jokester in Xander couldn't resist a potential laugh. _Oh I'm sorry Spike, looks like your precious jar's all smashed. This was all that's left_. That'll teach 'em to break and enter.

***///***

The taser arm fell limply to his side. Riley felt the voice call to him through the foundation, vibrating through the stone into his marrow. He walked like a creature possessed through the drafty halls.

His Master was calling.

The Initiative vest loaded with stakes clanked against the stone. The belt of holy water and stun grenades shuttered against a table. A hand drew silken curtains around his mind, beckoned him in with a slender finger. Such a sweet voice. It was to the arms of his lover that he was headed. Hadn't she told him to sleep alone in Lowell house tonight? His lover beckoned again with more urgency. The hand turned palm-side out, bleeding at the wrist.

Kneel.

The command triggered a brief struggle of will. But the velvet line of blood on alabaster skin was too seductive. He kneeled. The hand jerked away suddenly and Riley cried out, tricked, deprived.

He tore at the heavy damask drapes. The taser impeded progress and was discarded. Save me, the voice echoed weakly, as though it were at the end of its strength.

"Buffy," he whispered. The image of her broken body came to him—eyes rolled back into the sockets, blood pooling under her skull, naked bone jutting from her cheekbone, chest, thighs—an angular form crouching over the flushed, dead flesh. It bared its teeth as it turned, grinning, saying just as clearly as if it had been spoken, _bagged me another Slayer, I have_.

"No!" Jumping to his feet, a guttural cry ripped from his mouth. He barreled through the curtains.

On the other side, he found a target for his rage. A body, nearly as tall as he, slinking along the corridor shrouded in a weird blue haze. He took the target up by the throat. The howls of the protesting flesh did nothing to stop Riley as he choked the life out of the dusky-haired intruder. The black-haired fiend who had come with the intention to kill _her_.

The wretched creature called his name, struck feebly at his chest with open palms as if to push him away. Riley squeezed harder. No one would touch his Master. No one but him.

Not ever again.


	13. Returning the Favor

"Riley!" Xander squeaked, legs thrashing against the commando. Glazed eyes seemed to look through him. "It's me, Xander!"

A head-bashing jar might would have been useful right about now, Xander wished. The universe registered the wish and decided to have one last good laugh at Harris' expense. A black figure rose up out of nowhere.

"I don't mean to interrupt," and the figure surely didn't, because he didn't. The world grayed out at the edges of Xander's eyeballs. "But would one of you lovebirds tell me where the sodding hell I can find a good edged weapon? "

Xander flailed for air, for his snappy last words. "—Urn—" was all he managed. The vamp studied him with drawn, frowning eyebrows.

"Hold on a tic," Spike said as he slowly circled the pair. "Don't see it anywhere about." Riley's eyes bore into Xander's skull. He hadn't even turned his head to acknowledge the vampire circling them like a shark.

"—urn!— " Xander pleaded, at the end of his breath. To die knowing that at least he'd had a hand in screwing royally (maybe even ohgod ohgod universe pleaseplease please killing!) the vampire's evening of mayhem, Xander thanked the universe for small favors.

"Riiiight." Spike sucked in his cheeks, drawing his face into one of those ridiculous grimaces that made Xander burn to stake him right then and there.

Maybe the vamp was thinking, maybe he was just enjoying the show. The world Star Wars side-wiped to black. Dying, the very last thing that occurred to Xander, not as fun and glitzy as the movies made it look.

***///***

Oh yes, Spike thought to himself, he enjoyed this show _very much_. He watched as the pile of ash that had been Dracula until a few moments ago frothed on the wine-red carpet. Tendrils of smoke bubbled out of the ether. Yellow, scaly and reeking of sulfur, they reached out greedily for his blood. The vampire demon, incarnate.

Spike was enjoying himself so much, he decided that he might just have to smash the ceiling timbers of the banquet hall into their composite atoms after he took care of the business at hand.

He hefted the axe into striking position as he searched for sure footing. Step by step, sure footing whisked him in the opposite direction from his opponent. As he regrouped, still moving in the same backward motion but with a different phrase than _fleeing like a pillock_ in mind, Spike's foot snagged the chain.

"Not bloody likely," he chuckled, thanking his luck. A swift kick sent the torment chain into the center of the boiling, recorporealizing vampire-prince. The demon's scream rocked the floors. A gale-force hurricane of pure pissed off demon rose from the floor.

If he had to pinpoint the moment for posterity--the primal scream of the swirling yellow mass is about when Spike decided fleeing like a pillock wasn't a bad strategy.

He turned his back on the demon, and took off at full tilt down the hallway. Rich tapestries, paintings, candelabra and end tables flew by as he ran. The breath of the demon seared his back. The hallway branched in at a T-junction, and Spike threw himself down the right corridor without thought. His feet beat a frantic rhythm into the ground. The sound of his running feet lapped at his mind until, lulled by the passing minutes, _hours?_, his body began to fatigue.

"Dracula's got himself a bloody good get-out-of-jail free card. Remind me to ask him how," Spike panted. He was winded. Wasn't that the same tacky skull-shaped embroidery that he'd passed only a minute ago? Hadn't he already pithily derided that particularly tasteless portrait of Dracula? The hallway snarled back around on itself like a bloody maze on repeat.

The hallway branched again. Decision time.

He bounced from foot to foot. The demon was on his heels, on his heels with sulfur and brimstone, it was in the hallway and it was _here. _Spike slashed at the air. The axe stuck something solid and exploded into a shower of sparks.

This flashy reanimation shtick, this mobius strip hallway, this exploding enchanted weaponry bit—not an inch of it was Spike. Back against the wall, with only fists and fangs—that was the language Spike spoke. In his duster, his shoulders hunched down, looking up into the threatening emptiness of the castle, he looked like no bruiser. But looks or no, brawling's what he'd done well enough to keep himself in beer and bints for a hundred and twenty years.

He struck out wildly, fists glancing blows off some invisible, stinking mass. His arms slashed uselessly through the air. His feet fell back into a defensive stance, and he raised his elbows to form a guard.

He sagged against one the tapestries. Spike spit out the words he'd said only a year before in LA, surveying the tattered corpse that was the busted-in warehouse and rent torture table. "Lone wolf." Yet another botch-job in a long line of botch-jobs. "Sole survivor." The sarcasm burned something fierce. "Look out, here comes Spike!"

All at once, the feeling hit him. He couldn't fight this and win. _All over. _Against the screaming need to go down fighting, his fists dropped to his sides.

Spike turned up his head to take in a bit more art, maybe make a few more quips at Hellbeast Drac's expense before he snuffed it. It was a hanging tapestry. The rich maroon and navy hues illuminated a woman examining jewels, the tamed unicorn and lion attending the maiden in the forest rather than rending her limb from limb. "_A Mon Seul Desir_," Spike said heavily. "Bloody figures." The maid, in red silks and fiery blond hair, was an antipode to his Drusilla. "Should rip the bitch's throat out," he advised the lion mockingly. "She ain't exactly ever going to be yours, mate." Pointed at the unicorn. "See this bloke? Fancy free. Strong forehead. Good teeth. He's the one waitin' for the dark princess at the end of this fairy tale." He knew. He'd seen._ Bleedin' chaos demon._

So Spike did what couldn't remember having done in a century—he leaned against the tapestry in the quiet dark, smoked his last cig peaceably and waited for death.

Death returned the favor.

One heartbeat. _Two_. Skin hitting skin. A thin voice. The dull smell of blood oozing around broken capillaries on the skin's surface. And then something caught in his brain. This hallway didn't have any sense to it, aside from the solid wall against his back. Spike closed his eyes and let the tangibles cut through Dracula's illusion. Spike pushed his way through _A Mon Seul Desir_ and found himself in a lit hallway, brimming with the acrid sweat, reedy dust, rich pine, _sweetlovelyblood_ of the real.

He felt so relieved to see the two Scoobies locked in what he figured to be a thrall-induced death-struggle that he stubbed out the Last Cig.

"I don't mean to interrupt—" The lie made him smile, just a fraction as he watched the carpenter's eyes bug further out of his head. Harris flailed wildly against the sleeper hold, in little danger of dying. A little verbal sparring, a little chit chat. Savoring the small victory over the demon, the yellow nasty who was pissed and _coming_. Spike couldn't help himself. He vamped for the crowd. Big Bad, once again.

That's when Xander let it drop. "—urn!" he said with his last breaths. "—urn!" the carpenter repeated, like it was currency that would buy his life. A frown dragged itself across Spike's face, but he knew what was to be done. Harris passed out in the farm boy's arms. Once threat number current had been eliminated, Spike saw Riley's head snap up to acquire the new target.

"No," Riley said in steeled tones, eyes milky yet unfocused. His body jerked forward and tangled back on itself, a bit like watching a marionette catch in its own lines.

"Oh is that ever thrall," Spike said, conceding points to Dracula—"Blighter knows his mind control."

"Never Again," Riley said.

Spike squeezed his eyes shut as the soldier boy landed a fist on the bridge of his nose. Maybe thinking of puppies and Christmas might work to fool the chip when he jostled shoulders and stamped toes to nick wallets in the Bronze, but Spike knew he needed a new trick for the level of damage that he _absolutely wasn't thinking of doing to a living human being, oh ho, of course not._ Spike hummed a little tune through clenched teeth.

Soldier boy drove a knee into his solar plexus, landed a series of hammer blows to his ribcage. Blood hissed into his throat, setting his teeth so far on edge that he barely beat down the demon face. Relax, relax, sodding hell _relax_. Rolling his shoulders and neck like he was loosening up for a prize fight, Spike thought of the poncy lion from the tapestry. Golden-haired git with a goofy grin on its face as it waited hand on foot for the lovely maid in her encampment by the woods, the red of the maid's heart blazing in the deeper shade of the tent. Dumbfounded into holding the tress of her gauzy shawl. The lovely bint whom was obviously having none of what he offered because _it was wrong_—Spike's fist cracked Riley's jaw as he caught the underside of the skull with the building fury of a whip-fast uppercut. The chip lagged a moment behind, crying out in indignation.

"Stay down," Spike snarled, vamping out in pain. Half of his body became sluggish, then refused to obey commands altogether.

Riley struggled to his feet, but Spike cut the legs out from under him with a low sweep. The git refused to stay down. Spike drove foot into his ribcage. Pain from the chip popped vessels in his brain; blood trickled out of Spike's nose as the chip convulsed. Riley moaned, pushing himself off the floor, breath shallow from what sounded like a cracked rib pushing on the lungs. Despite the mingled fun of beating soldier boy and migraine headaches, it occurred to Spike as the chip continued to howl in fury that the little hunk of plastic could treat him to a permanent vegetative state if it so desired.

Spike switched tacts. He collapsed to the floor. "Carpenter, wake up," nudging the unconscious boy with the back of his bloodied fist. If anything would piss him off enough to wake him, Spike figured, it would be the clammy hand of vampire on his precious self. Two fingers to the red marks around his neck. Heartbeat, yes. Consciousness, no. "So help me Harris, if you hid that sodding urn—I'm gonna—" The threat, empty of any real emotion, died in ragged breaths. No response. No defenses. And no urn. Spike shoved Harris' body away with a growl.

A blue oblong dislodged from the prone form's pocket, casting a weak blue pall over the almost comical scene of the vampire absently sucking on the trickle of blood from his nose, the soldier boy struggling to rise, the young man still as death and having the best time of any of them.

Spike nudged the blue oblong with his thumb. And then the walls at the end of the corridor exploded, blasting splinters of rock into his skin. One severely pissed off yellow-mist demon ripped straight through the hole towards their heads.

The formless demon expanded to fill the hallway, boiling the tapestries from the walls and blotting out the light as it sucked into itself everything the yellow tendrils touched. And it was nearly on them. They had, Spike featured, one chance. And he was betting it foolishly on the simple thought that had sidled into his head: like calls to like.

It took him less than a second to react.

"Game time gents." Spike slapped the blue oblong into Xander's limp hand. "Time to separate the men from the boys." He took Riley up by the scruff of his neck and clamped Riley's hand around Xander's wrist. "If you even think of letting go, your sodding Master is going to rip you limb from limb."

Riley eyes were the size of moons.

Spike fixed him in a killing stare. "You get me?" Riley nodded once and raised Xander's open fist into the air.

Bracing—or from a more accurate perspective, shielding his body with—the two humans, the blue stone was raised above Xander's head like a brave little gopher poking its head out of its burrow in the path of a John Deere steerable. Spike squeezed his head against his chest and drew the duster over like a lead blanket with the arm that still worked.

He didn't see the demon come up short against the oblong, twisting and distorting its maw horribly. He certainly didn't see the thing attempting to take human form, collapsing into a shining statuesque body that clawed the walls, the tatters of the black damask curtains, the floors, anything to keep from being pulled limb from limb into the stone. Spike felt the pull at his body, grabbing him, trying to rip the demon from his skin, his skin from his bones, his bones from the fabric of the world.

He didn't see it, but did hear the frightfully satisfying _pop_ as the last bits of the yellow demon swirled into the cheery blue glow of the lekythos, recalled from wherever it had been to Harris' palm. From within the lekythos, below the threshold of hearing for anything non-vampiric, a drawn-out wail issued.

Edging the duster away from his face, Spike looked on. He was stunned that the gambit had worked. Every last finger, toe, and hair follicle was intact. Blood caking on his face, chunks of rock imbedded in his skin, stretched to the breaking point but intact. The hearts of the two humans pumped away.

Spike stood in the blasted remains of the corridor. The ceiling had been ripped clean off; the walls were shorn of ornament; debris abutted what remained of the doorway into the banquet hall. Reaching over to relieve the sagging column of Riley and Xander's arms of the lekythos, Spike realized that his trip down the Never Never Hallway hadn't carried him but ten feet from the door.

His fingers brushed the blue stone. The pull at his flesh and his teeth like he himself were being sucked atom by atom into the peaceful blue of the funerary urn. Spike recoiled. He stumbled back into a Brazilian Rosewood chest that he'd eyed to snag for his crypt when this whole mess was finished. He cracked the flawless finish and to his mind, putting the final touches on the exquisitely rendered ruin of the evening.

"Bloody hurrah for magic," Spike said, more than a bit sarcastically.


	14. Heavy Lifting Won't Kill You

Riley groaned. The thrall thinned enough to let the pain in his chest rip through. He was on the verge of feeling truly and well beat-in, when a voice said, _Might as well have a bit of fun with the boy_. His body snapped to attention. –_Your master commands you to carry the carpenter somewhere safe_. Amidst the stone and wood of the wrecked hallway, a figure hovered over him, sagging face seemingly mild of concern and a great deal annoyed.

Riley felt the swelling inside his jaw and his chest dull. Fragments of the night slanted back into place. "You saved us."

_Don't remind me_.

"Who _are_ you?"

_Bollocks, who d'ya think I am—Angel? On your feet toy soldier. Let's see if some heavy lifting won't kill you._

***///***

"—And then I carried Xander back here, where he regained consciousness after some cold water to the face. That pretty much covers the night up till the present."

On Giles' couch, a cup of hot tea between his hands and a blanket thrown over his shoulders for good measure, even though he was more than a little sticky hot under the rough wool—Riley admitted to himself that he actually remembered very little of the night after he entered Dracula's castle. Two pairs of eyes, Xander's and Giles', gave him appraising looks. Riley wondered dimly why he was the one who was being treated like a disaster victim. A twinge in his side killed the complaint before it found voice.

"And you say that after you choked Xander into unconsciousness, you preceded to fight off Dracula's thrall and use the lid of the blue urn in Xander's pocket—which had just happened to fall to the floor and which you just happened to assume could defeat the reanimated vampire –to beat back the vampire prince all of your own accord?" Giles raised an eyebrow. His manner of breaking down the component parts of bullshit and selecting the choicest ludicrous claims to shame the teller was dead-on, as usual. But Riley persisted.

"That's how it happened sir," Riley said.

Giles and Xander traded a disbelieving look.

"Why is this so hard to believe?" Riley asked, turning ever so slightly from Giles to Xander. "Buffy did it."

"I think this should be stating the obvious, but you and Buffy—world of difference. For one, Buffy? Way more fetching in basic black. For another, Buffy usually manages to save the day without utilizing the Strangle Xander tactic."

"What Xander is trying to say is that the logical gaps in your story, to a skeptical observer, w-would make it seem like you're glossing over certain facts. Such as the involvement of another party?"

"There was no one—"

"—I remember someone—"

Xander and Riley stopped.

Riley tried to resolve the figure in his mind, but couldn't. "Angel," he said hazily, almost like a question.

Xander mulled over the name, visualizing the seconds before the aching, terrible black. He remembered the veins in his forehead screaming. Oxygen deprivation had to be given its due, but—he had felt annoyance. Annoyance beyond measure. And he had seen a brightly haloed head. The ferocity with which he wanted to spend his last breath staking his rescuer returned to Xander. His knuckles turned white. "I must have seen him before I passed out," is all he said.

Giles turned a cool, expressionless face to the other man. "Did Angel say anything—"

"No sir. You know—Angel—sir. Tall dark and brooding. Not big on the details."

"I'm sure it wasn't Buffy—" Xander said, compelled to elaborate as Giles' face recorded the fainted twitch of a very parental hurt. "I mean, if Buffy had news, the first person she'd call, I'm sure would be you—" Xander stumbled. He honestly wasn't sure. In all likelihood, Riley was Buffy's number one speed-dial. "It wouldn't be Angel. I'm sure he has contacts, people who know people, that sort of thing."

"Y-yes, well," Giles replied. Xander could see the brief struggle in the Watcher's emotions in the slight grimace that tugged on the corners of his mouth. The emotion, like others in the past, was banished, or maybe simply disguised, by work. "This appears to be the first instance of non-ritualistic reanimation in Watcher records. No doubt the Council will be interested. I should undoubtedly update the Chronicle..."

Giles hovered over the couch, perhaps looking to refresh their 3 am tea, perhaps searching their faces for the traces of the story that wasn't being told.

"Xander, make sure to swing Riley by the hospital." Giles motioned towards the door. "Take my car if you must." Giles said a few moments later with some finality. He excused himself and disappeared up the stairs.

"It could have been worse," Xander said after a pause. "It could have been Spike."

Riley put a hand to his wheezing, broken chest.

"—I guess it could have been worse—"

"—Yeah, it really couldn't have been worse—"

"Was it you who carried me back?" Xander asked coolly.

"Yes," Riley winced. Even in a fireman carry, Xander's weight had been almost too much to bear. But they, Xander and he, were friends. He owed Xander more than a free ride home.

"Needle and Gauze time," Xander nodded toward the door.

Riley felt the faint need to return to Lowell House wilt under the rush of blood to his chest. He refused Xander's proffered hand.

"Your funeral," Xander said. He backpedaled as Riley's legs wobbled and a hand went to his smashed-in forehead. "I'm sure _not literally_."

"It's funny—not ha-ha funny like head trauma—" Xander said as he opened the door to Giles' new convertible. "—but I can't help thinking, the vamp in the hallway was Spike."

"What would Spike be doing at the mansion?" Riley asked, lowering himself slowly onto the passenger seat.

"How would Spike even know Drac was in town, right?" Xander laughed it off. The engine revved up.

"We have impossible luck," Riley said.

"How's that?"

"I mean Angel picks tonight of all nights to visit Sunnydale just in time to rescue our sorry asses."

Xander was going to feed Riley the contacts line again when realization dawned. He slammed a fist into the steering wheel. For the second time that night, he allowed himself to more than half-remember Cordelia without actually giving name to his regrets. "He's got a girl who has visions."

"That explains everything," Riley said mildly.

"It sure does," Xander said.

The rest of drive to the hospital passed in silence. The night's action had simply been a detour, Xander thought as Riley was escorted out of the waiting room by the nursing staff. Thanking the nurse by name—_Ben, you've been a big help, you have no idea_—Xander and Riley fell into step out to Giles' convertible. The easy banter that they'd shared at Dracula's castle after _Dracula's Demise_, _Part Un (A Film Presented in Many Parts)_ had evaporated.

"They loaded me up with morphine and a prescription for oxy," Riley said without prompting. "I don't think the lung's actually punctured."

"I didn't think they'd release you," Xander said conversationally as he unlocked Riley's door.

"Why did you wait?" Riley asked, uncharacteristically gracious as Xander completed the small gesture of opening the door for him—no doubt blissed out on morphine.

"It's sort of my specialty," Xander kicked the car into drive. "Taser-toting commando busts in doors, I look decorative in waiting rooms. Where do you want me to drop you?" Xander passed a quick glance over at Riley. "Buffy's?"

"Lowell house will be fine."

"Won't Buffy be worried?"

"She's not worried."

"Are things between you—"

"I'm fine. I mean, we're fine." A worried look passed over Riley's face. "We're fine, right? About _earlier_?"

Xander pulled up to a red. The empty intersection felt Lynchian as a strong wind set the street light waving. His fingers drummed faster on the steering wheel. He didn't have a ready answer that wasn't a lie and didn't sound like an inept glossing of the question that even Mr. Morphine could detect. Xander watched the streetlight click over to green. He gunned the engine.

As long as he was moving, it wasn't a lie. "We're fine."

The car took the turn onto campus harder than either man expected. Xander took a long look at Riley as they pulled up to Lowell House. The man sitting next to him wasn't Commando Riley, but a young man slumped down in his seat, one hand resting over his heart, taking care that his breathing didn't stretch his bandages. Vulnerability, he thought he saw, acknowledgement of uselessness . Xander had to restrain himself. _Useless_? He wanted to scream. _You defeated the Prince of Darkness_. _I was the Master's butt monkey_._ You beat off the unstoppable vampire's mind control, saved my ass, and teamed up with what passes for your arch-nemesis to defeat an( un)common evil. And _you _feel useless because it's a little hard for you to walk with your dislocated ribs?_

"When they were wrapping my ribs, Ben kept telling me to sit up straight, to stop fidgeting." Riley laughed. "I had a killer itch on my back."

"What happened to the urn?" Xander asked, voice full doubtful.

"I destroyed it."

"Do you need any—help?" Riley shook his head. Xander, completely unwilling to watch Riley hobble up to Lowell House like the pathetic loser Xander knew he wasn't, took off as soon as the passenger door slammed shut.

The early morning air distilled the quiet rawness to a single image pulled from his memory from his enjoining vision—Buffy & Riley on the edge of an endless desert, looking back on him.

"We're way ahead of you," Xander said to no one. He really fucking hated that desert.


	15. Are We Having a Conversation

This night easily ranked in the Most Boring Patrol Nights Ever. "How hard can it be to claw way out of a paper-thin coffin?" Buffy kicked a clump of sod across the freshly-dug dirt.

That line fulfilled the universe's irony quotient. Mrs. Susan Manners sprang up from the loose dirt, fangs bared towards the blood, sweet rich blood of a waiting victim—right into an impeccably aimed stake. The vampire's face contorted in disappointment as it crumbled away to dust.

Buffy stifled a yawn. Where was she again in the mental inventory of the night? Oh yeah. All was Not Right in the world.

Buffy sauntered over to the next target, seven graves down. The demon called out to her through the layers of earth. Whether it would rise tonight, or wait until it smelled a new night, she couldn't figure. And if it did rise…would it be so wrong if she, dunno, let her stake slip down to her side, her muscles tense for the chase. Not a hunt, she told herself. Only a head-start.

"No hunting," said aloud, not trusting that shady inner voice of hers as far as Inner-Her could throw it. "And you know this night would be _so _much less of the bad if someone had actually picked up a phone!"

"Who are you talking to?" The newly risen vamp asked, poking his head out of the grave.

"Mausoleum, tree, feather duster—who do you think I'm talking to? Myself, you twit!" Buffy raised the stake for a killing blow, then thought better of it. The vampire was perplexed when, against all odds, actually offered an arm. He took it. For a second a pleased look flitted across his face as an all-you-can-eat Buffy buffet filled his vision. Only for a second. The patrol instinct won out. A quick plunge, and a new coating of ash fell on the freshly turned dirt.

"This blows," Buffy said, feeling no more stirring in this graveyard. Walking the street adjacent to the rolling green of Sunny Pines, she crossed her arms as though she were cold. Next up, Restfield Park.

"Hello, Restfield Park. This is Buffy, your patrol for the night. Please look to the front and rear to locate the nearest emergency exits. You will find that they all lead to pointy death. We'd like to thank you for choosing Air Buffy. Have a good flight."

She dislodged a rock in the grass. She much preferred the rolling grass hills of Restfield Park to the sterile sod of Sunny Pines, which during the rare lit hours of her life was neither sunny—shaded as it were by the large industrial complexes bordering the southern and eastern exposures—nor piney, all the great pines having been cut out of the center of the city with surgery-precision and transplanted to the edges of the city. Some impressive firs had managed to escape the knife, a cluster of the tallest tree crowns towering over what she liked to think of as _her_ corner of Restfield Park. The Alpert crypt loomed into view--her favorite, or at least most familiar, freaky cereal box of doom—bordering a row of squat headstones where Giles had chosen to test her field Slayer skills more nights than not in her first Sunnydale year. It was the fondness, she thought, someone might have for a worn 70's-hangover plaid couch.

A vibe sliced across the sensitive Slayer section of her brain. Mobile vamp, closing in from the north, travelling more slowly than expected—little faster than a jaunty limp. Probably one of the less bright newbie vamps thinking it could score easy bread in a graveyard. She flipped a new stake from her waistband. Her heart geared up as she crouched, the muscles in her calves tensing, flexing, preparing for the attack. She wasn't going to spring. She wasn't going to launch full-tilt at the vamp. She was prepared to fight back, that's all. She was prepared and she was going to kill this thing deader than—the vampire, laden with chains, stumbled into her line of sight, hitching up short with a strangled cry.

"Oh," she said disappointedly. The stake fell to her side.

"Oh brilliant," Spike choked out, all hidden except for the shine of highlights in his hair and on the chain wrapped around his shoulders. "If this isn't the absolute worst night of my life, I don't know—" His hands edged into the low light of the conveniently lighted graveyard.

"—Are you wearing gardening gloves?" Buffy sniffed. "They look kinda… ridiculous."

The chain made no noise as it tumbled to the ground. "What could possibly rate such _shoddy_ treatment from the bloody universe? I mean, is this funny to you? Is it? Are you bloody well laughing up there?" He pulled one glove, then the other, and threw them against the grass.

"Do you want to rough me up Slayer? Go ahead. Lay it on me." Spike stepped into the light, and Buffy, reflexively and against her conscious instincts, let out a hiss of breath. His face pitted and caked with clotted blood. Half of his body sagged, as though he had been split down the middle, gravity winning out over vampire strength. He took a few small steps forward. The stink of sulfur drilled into her nose.

"That's far enough," Buffy held her hands up. A long grimace pulled at the corners of her mouth. "You're a wreck."

"Am I?" He leaned against the closest fir, half for posturing and half, Buffy figured, for support, his legs swaying like reeds in a strong current.

"And that smell—" Her nose wrinkled. "Have you been frolicking through the city dump?"

"If you're not going to beat me senseless," Spike retorted. "Leave off."

Buffy returned the stake to striking position. To Spike's credit, he didn't bother to look any less supremely uncaring as he had the moment before. Having lost its magical power to shut Spike up, the stake dropped back down to her side. She contemplated the graceful Slayer stalk-off, leaving the stinking, oozing, beat-in vamp to his own. But sheer contrariness seemed to get the better of her. Her taking a step forward declared her intention of exactly that.

"What new toy is this?" She scuffed the chain with her foot.

"Nothin'," Spike said suspiciously. Stooping to retrieve it, he must have jerked a muscle wrongly, because a moment later, he sagged backward, a hand against his forehead as though the chip had fired.

Maybe the fact that Spike was the first person to say more than a sentence to her in six hours clouded her normally snappy Slayer judgment, but she felt the slightest emotion which she wasn't going to examine for the wounded vamp. Braving the onslaught of putrid olfactory input, she grabbed up the chain and held it out to him.

"Bloody hell," he yelped, shrinking back into the tree. "If you want to kill me Slayer, stake me good and proper."

"I'm, I thought I was—" Buffy stopped. Why was she trying to apologize to the recidivist vampire? "What _is_ this, Spike?"

Spike puffed out his chest. "'S a genuine chain of torment. Nicked it from the shop earlier this evening—had to disarm a few mystical locks with my cunning know-how."

"You're proud of crime," Buffy said, her not complete lack of impressed writ large on the bored angle of her hip, the stake tapping against her leg, the chain tight in her fist. "You're proud of crime and you're telling _me_. You do realize this is mine now?"

Spike arched his shoulders in the barest shrug. "Been carrying that damn chain forever," he said. "Thing like that, weighs heavily on a person after a piece."

Slinging the surprisingly light chain around her shoulder like a scarf, Buffy moved off a few feet, giving in to her screaming nose. As she backed off, she saw Spike straighten up, his face less twisted, less like an animated corpse and more like the smug pain-in-the ass of _Buffy : The College Years_.

"So," she continued, scuffing at some freshly turned dirt with her heel, "that's a Technicolor assortment of bruises you've got there."

He was nodding again and about to answer—when a perplexed expression traversed from eyes to his mouth. "Are we having a conversation, Slayer?" He sounded perkier, as though more than the weight of the chain had been lifted from his small, slumped body.

"No! Completely of the no." There was that wicked smirk that made her want to punch him, if not for the extreme evidence of the good smashing-in his face had received already. "Stranger things have happened," she offered as way of explanation for her entire night's behavior, not just to Spike, but to herself, Riley, Giles, Xander, Dracula, Angel—the whole lot of them. _Stranger things have happened_. Unconsciously she touched her neck. Dracula's mark. A mark that she'd, at least on some level, willingly taken. Immediately she regretted the hand as the vampire's eyes drew down to the spot, quirking a quick eyebrow at her.

"That a fact?" He pushed off from the tree.

"Look—" she shifted the chain around her shoulder blades, pleasantly cool against her skin and fetchingly matched to the Weapons of Destruction / stake motif, to cover the wound. "If I find you near the Magic Shop, I'm going to stake you—no questions asked."

"Not headed to the Magic Shop," he said.

"Where then?" Buffy asked. "Not that I care. Just that I'd like to know what I should stake you for, when word comes back."

"Seeing as I'm feelin' chipper," Spike punctuated the sentence with an ironic fist to the skull that Buffy didn't quite understand. "Figured on headin' to good ole UC SunnyD for some five-card," he said.

"How dumb do I look," Buffy said flatly.

"Ravishingly dumb, pet." He rocked on his heels. "Know where a bloke could find a plastic chest this time of night?" He seemed to take special pleasure from the _muh?_ face she knew she was wearing. "'S not important. Fancy that man such as myself could make do with whatever's on-hand. Say hello to the Poof for me."

The chain weighed on her shoulders as Spike disappeared.

***///***

Spike loitered the Lowell house Rec Room, smoking cigs and dealing himself imaginary hands of five-card stud. The rumble of an engine pulling up to the house, idling, and then roaring off into the distance cut the game short. He stuffed the pack of cards into a duster pocket, barely containing the nervous jitter in his limbs. He was strangely keyed up, but viciously suppressed any further thought on that account. Seconds later, the door pushed open and Riley shuffled in, arm around his midsection. A twang of pride in his handiwork brought a grin to his face. _Take that, sodding Made in America ballocks._

Riley shuffled toward the vampire like a thrashed homing pigeon. Musta been the smell of tobacco or somesuch other olfactory clue. Or maybe it was the sulfur shrouding his duster like a thick reminder that the clean smell of dust was a much more amiable companion.

"That's far enough boy," Spike growled. "Do you have it?"

"I have it," Riley said.

"There's a plastic chest on the table in front of you. Can you find it?"

"—yes."

"Put it in and latch it shut."

"—yes."

"That's all toy soldier," Spike said dismissively. Riley stood stock still. "Oh bugger, how would Dru do it? _You are released_. Better for you if you don't make me say it thrice."

Riley's shoulders sagged and he toppled over onto one of the thread-bare Rec Room couches. "Spike?" He said through a great deal of haze and confusion. "_Spike?" _His hand went to his ribs, jaw, forehead. "The chip—"

"Don't get excited. You had a little tussle with Dracula. You and the Poof made with the big heroics and saved the poor carpenter." Spike said cheerily. "If I know spells—" and even though on his best nights he had no truck with that kind of bollocks, tonight proved to himself that even after so many years of disuse, he was pretty handy with the occasional stuff— "you should remember everything in Technicolor detail come morning." Oh there was another savage grin on his face, he was sure of it.

"There's a stake here with your name on it." Riley groped for his vest. "Where are my stakes?"

"Look, I'd love to play twenty questions with the brain damaged as much as the next bloke—" Spike said, whisking the chest under his arm. "But you can get stuffed."

"I'm not going to be down for the count for long," Riley growled. "Tell me what you came here for, and maybe I'll think twice before staking you the next time the fancy strikes."

"Ooh, big talk. Might be a little more intimidatin' if you didn't look like you were doin' qualifying rounds for Miss Intensive Care." Spike laughed with no real amusement. It riled soldier boy, but strangely didn't please him as much. "I was collecting what I was owed."

"And who on God's green earth could owe you anything?"

Spike shrugged. "Stranger things've happened."

"Spike," Riley warned. "Tell me what's in the box."

"My eleven sodding quid."

More derogatory questions were shouted after him, and for Spike's part in the little Q&A, didn't consider them worthy enough for a two-finger _we're finished_ salute. He stalked out of Lowell house into the rosy glow of pre-dawn light. All wounds, slights, and moments of uncomfortably close reflection considered, it had been a bloody good night.


	16. Owing to the Truth

It had been a good dream, but the rosy glow of Darla's presence didn't linger. As the sun inched above the horizon, the specifics tangled in his mind. Red kimono. Satin cuffs. Hard wooden chair. The stumbling drunk. Did he remember a sweet press of lips that tasted like ash? Through the slates of the Venetian blinds, the cold glow of morning light spilled across a section of floor.

A soft drumming at the door. Voices on the other side, barely dulled by the Arc Deco doors, whispered to each other, _is he awake_? _Should we enter? This is the third time tonight_. _Something must be wrong_. Another knock.

Sketchbook in-hand, Angel walked to the door and pressed his face against the wood—neither warm nor cold, simply dead. He didn't open up.

"Angel?" Cordelia spoke. "Another call from Sunnydale. It's Giles—"

"Did you have a vision?" Angel asked, voice rough from disuse.

"No, but this is—"

"—not important."

"So that sacred duty of helping the helpless only applies to Visions Cases now?" Cordelia's provoking tone lost none of its sharpness through the thick door.

"Buffy's not helpless. She has her own people."

"And those people are _calling _us! Like all-hourly. It's—"

"—_not my problem_."

Cordelia stomped off down the hallway.

Angel turned the leaf of his drawing pad. Blank page. He cut the white with a bold stroke of charcoal.

***///***

**Thrall, Vampire. **(2000) Filed jointly under **Dracula Prince of Transylvania**; **Impaler, Vlad **in the Sunnydale Watchers' Chronicle

Amend: the original **Thrall, Vampire: Drusilla** written two years ago.

Cross-reference: End of World; Old Ones; Acathla; Order of Aurelius; Slayer Deaths: Kendra; ANGELUS, Interrogation Techniques; Interrogation Techniques: Giles, Succumbing to.

THRALL, vampiric thrall or vampiric gaze. Sometimes called GAZE in reference to vampires, or VOICE in the old texts referring to an unknown class of powerful seer, one lately identified with Donan Wood in Scotland. Thrall is the condition under which a vampire, using hypnotic, magical, visual and/or auditory suggestion to implant ideas or actions in a human's mind. Instances of thrall or gaze noted in the old texts have often failed to differentiate between instances of actions carried out by humans under simple terror and by thrall. For example, ANGELUS's thrall in earlier Chronicles should be re-categorized as simple acts of terror-induced compulsion. The vampire failed to utilize any kind of compulsion technique during interrogation.

New data suggest that every individual's response to thrall differs not only in type, but also in ability to combat vampiric mind control. Trustworthy first-hand accounts—the Slayer herself, a close associate, and XANDAR HARRIS—seem to indicate that the more doughty the personality, the likelier one prevails in regaining free will. It is not coincidental that the two most battle-hardened cast off Dracula's thrall in order to destroy the vampire host.

This response to vampiric thrall raises serious doubts in my mind vis-a-vis Watcher traditions of unquestioning obeisance on the part of the Slayer. Kendra, a textbook Slayer, found herself ill-equipped to defend against DRUSILLA and consequently failed to resist the vampiric suggestion. It is safe to assume that the vampire suggestion was a simple command to desist. When presented with a vision of Jenny Calendar by DRUSILLA, hours of torture rendered me unable to correctly identify the illusory visage as vampiric thrall. Xander Harris likewise accepted DRACULA's command to act as spy against the Slayer's cadre. Whereas Kendra's and my own lapse lasted for mere moments, Xander Harris remained under the sway of DRACULA until the vampire was destroyed* (*Dracula's first recorded 2000 death, see Dracula, Recorded Stakings).

The conclusions that can be drawn from these data are vexingly slim. Harris can hardly be faulted for an unquestioning attitude, and I myself have only on the rarest occasion and with the most fervent convincing fallen lock-step with the demands of the Council regarding the oldest of surviving Slayer traditions, the Cruciamentum (see Giles, Relieved of Watcher Duty 1999).

Yet despite the paucity of data from which to draw conclusions, the fact remains that Buffy Summers and Riley Finn were the only two successful at resisting vampiric thrall. Had they not, the vampire's kill count would have been—regrettably—dearer.

Recollections of the event have been recorded from most of the participants. All attempts to contact Angel have been rebuffed. I am more than ever pleased that the Slayer has found a strong ally in the young soldier Riley Finn. Even if, at the same time that I happily resume my chronicling of the Slayer at her urging, it is clear that I no longer hold her ear. Having planned to return to England following the confrontation with Dracula due to my general uselessness and following the destruction of my Library, I can find no fault with my Slayer's choice to cast her net wider than myself. And would, in fact, have encouraged her to do so myself—if she had not already learned this lesson with much difficulty years ago with the point of the Cruciamentum needle in her arm.

[Delete: Previous paragraph. Chronicle: Append new ending.]

Despite the paucity of data from which to draw conclusions, the fact remains that Buffy Summers and Riley Finn were the only two successful at resisting vampiric thrall and had they not, the vampire's kill count would have been—regrettably—dearer. [OMITTED]

The future will tell if the combined effort of Angel, Riley Finn and the Slayer will prove successful.

***///***

All was not right in the world.

But Spike's leaving signaled her changing luck. Buffy could feel it in her bones. The night, burnt down to the tar-stained nub, was already looking up. Three more vamps were set to dusty conclusion. One even gave her a light chase.

The rosy tint of light hung on the low-lying clouds. Tomorrow, her new training started. The day after, back-to-school shopping at the outlet mall with Will and Tara. In a week, Fall Quarter. The cycle of sleeping through classes, panicked late-night stake-and-cram sessions, the hammer blow of pencils-down finals glistened like a fat apple. And throughout, Riley could be counted on, the Petra at the center of the whirlwind Buffy Summers lifestyle.

She sauntered along the damp graveyard turf that ran along the tallest Sunnydale hill. Warm rays of the morning sun lit the palm trees. She looked out across the rows of Spanish-style ranch homes that shimmered like some kind of plasticine pastoral. As far as she was concerned—and owing to the fact that for Buffy Summers, such was not an entirely unreasonable expectation—the world could be set right again.


End file.
